An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

Death of Franz von Sickingen and Hutten.

The Archbishop of Treves proved himself a sagacious military commander and gained the support of his subjects. Franz was forced to retire to his castle, where he was besieged by the neighboring elector of the Palatinate and the landgrave of Hesse, a friend of Luther's. The walls of the stronghold were battered down by the "unchristian cannonading," and the "executor of righteousness," as Franz was called, was fatally injured by a falling beam. A few months later, Hutten died, a miserable fugitive in Switzerland. A confederation of the knights, of which Sickingen had been the head, aroused the apprehension of the princes, who gathered sufficient forces to destroy more than twenty of the knights' castles. So Hutten's great plan for restoring the knights to their former influence came to a sad and sudden end. It is clear that these men had little in common with Luther; yet they talked much of evangelical reform, and he was naturally blamed for their misdeeds. Those who adhered to the old Church now felt that they had conclusive proof that heresy led to anarchy; and since it threatened the civil government as well as the Church, they urged that it should be put down with fire and sword.

Hadrian VI confesses the evil deeds of the papacy.

152. While Luther was in the Wartburg, the cultured and worldly Leo X had died and had been succeeded by a devout professor of theology, who had once been Charles V's tutor. The new pope, Hadrian VI, was honest and simple, and a well-known advocate of reform without change of belief. He believed that the German revolt was a divine judgment called down by the wickedness of men, especially of the priests and prelates. He freely confessed, through his legate, in a meeting of the German diet at Nuremberg, that the popes had been perhaps the most conspicuous sinners. "We well know that for many years the most scandalous things have happened in this holy see [of Rome],—abuses in spiritual matters, violations of the canons,—that, in short, everything has been just the opposite of what it should have been. What wonder, then, if the disease has spread from the head to the members, from the popes to the lower clergy. We clergymen have all strayed from the right path, and for a long time there has been no one of us righteous, no, not one."

Hadrian's denunciation of Luther.

In spite of this honest confession, Hadrian was unwilling to listen to the grievances of the Germans until they had put down Luther and his heresies. He was, the pope declared, a worse foe to Christendom than the Turk. There could be nothing fouler or more disgraceful than Luther's teachings. He sought to overthrow the very basis of religion and morality. He was like Mohammed, but worse, for he would have the consecrated monks and nuns marry. Nothing would be securely established among men if every presumptuous upstart should insist that he had the right to overturn everything which had been firmly established for centuries and by saints and sages.

The action of the diet of Nuremberg, 1522.

The diet was much gratified by the pope's frank avowal of the sins of his predecessors, in which it heartily concurred. It was glad that the pope was going to begin his reform at home, but it strenuously refused to order the enforcement of the Edict of Worms for fear of stirring up new troubles. The Germans were too generally convinced that they were suffering from the oppression of the Roman curia to permit Luther to be injured. His arrest would seem an attack upon the freedom of gospel teaching and a defence of the old system; it might even lead to civil war. So the diet advised that a Christian council be summoned in Germany to be made up of laymen as well as clergymen, who should be charged to speak their opinions freely and say, not what was pleasant, but what was true. In the meantime, only the pure gospel should be preached according to the teaching of the Christian Church. As to the complaint of the pope that the monks had deserted their monasteries and the priests taken wives, these were not matters with which the civil authority had anything to do. As the elector of Saxony observed, he paid no attention to the monks when they ran into the monastery, and he saw no reason for noticing when they ran out. Luther's books were, however, to be no longer published, and learned men were to admonish the erring preachers. Luther, himself, was to hold his peace. This doubtless gives a fair idea of public opinion in Germany. It is noteworthy that Luther did not seem to the diet to be a very discreet person and it showed no particular respect for him.

Accession of Pope Clement VII.